“I was born in Gadag taluk and my father was a station superintendent there. My elder brother played some serious cricket back then and my father was a big soccer fan. Not a hardcore cricket fan but he used to watch it with us. So, Cricket was kind of a household thing for me.”

“My first encounter with cricket was in a gully cricket tennis ball tournament. My brother’s team were short of a player and he asked me to come and play that match with him. So, I decided I’ll go with him and play that match. As it was a tennis ball, it’s usually tough to bowl spin with it and because of that, I was just bowling fast. My brother stopped and asked me to try spin. That’s where a lot of things changed for me. I still remember, I took 3 good wickets in that match and we won the finals. That is when my brother also saw thought that I should take this up seriously.”

“I was one of 6 players (only the first 3 players got the travel allowance) who was supposed to go to Bangalore for the next round of selections. My brother asked me how I would get the money to travel and stay in Bangalore for the selections. So, I went back, I saw that out of those 6 players, 3 were batsmen. I took their wickets more than once and the conveyor there saw that and from the 6th player, I was the 1st player.”

“So, I came to Bangalore and KSCA was still a matting ground. We were the mofussil players and all we did was stand somewhere besides. We didn’t know when we would get our chance. The routine was after Bangalore players had their chance is when we got ours. I bowled, and I got selected in the 2nd round as well. In the last round, I was standing somewhere and next to me was Syed Kirmani. He saw me bowling and he went and asked the selector who I was and why wasn’t I continuing to bowl but he didn’t know my set was done. I got my chance again to a bowl and after that, Kirmani came and told ‘He will shine for Karnataka’. Even now I have high regards for Kirmani, not because he said that but he spotted the talent in me before I did. That is when my actual journey started.”

“My marriage changed my perspective about life. I married a sardarni. I’ll tell you why it changed me. The kind of fighting spirit and stubbornness to win, that exists amongst her family and her community, kind off changed me and I learned things from her. I am Sunil Joshi.”